Demanding better, Jones provides a wise, measured look at the economic and social landscape of America.
A prominent Black activist and YA author delivers a damning, resounding study of the many ways in which fiscal equality is denied to non-White people in the U.S.
“We know we’re equal to white people,” writes Jones. “Only a person in the deepest throes of the white supremacist delusion would say we aren’t. But now we’re fighting for equity. And we won’t get to equity until we rethink the system from the ground up.” By way of a pointed, memorable example, she looks into the history of Monopoly, which, she holds, was designed to teach players not how to get rich but how the financial system is rigged in favor of would-be monopolists—and certainly against Black people, who are legally thwarted or beset with violence whenever it appears that they are making advances. Whites, Jones notes, hold 90% of all wealth in the U.S. even though they represent less than 60% of the population. One reason for this bounty is that home loans and other intergenerational wealth-building instruments, including college loans, were readily extended to Whites while being withheld from Blacks. Jones fires with both barrels, sometimes inaccurately: It’s true that Black popular culture has been appropriated without proper compensation, though not in the case of Elvis Presley’s hit “Hound Dog,” which she attributes to Big Mama Thornton when in fact it was written by Leiber & Stoller. Still, the author’s points are well taken: Black communities can close the wealth gap only with resources that pass from one generation to the next. Jones advises measures for a sort of Reconstruction 2.0 that would channel reparations to institutions and not individuals. “Structural issues are what brought us here,” she writes, “and so structural changes should walk us out of here.” The author also argues that self-improvement, from education to exercise to financial literacy, is “the most revolutionary thing you can do” for people within the Black community.”
Demanding better, Jones provides a wise, measured look at the economic and social landscape of America.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-80512-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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